816 MORE child prove a notable and rare man." l At the proper age young More was sent to Oxford, where he is said vaguely to have had Colet, Grocyn, and Linacre for his tutors. 2 All More himself says is that he had Linacre for his master in Greek. Learning Greek was not the matter of course which it has since become. Greek was not as yet part of the arts curriculum, and to learn it voluntarily was ill looked upon by the authorities. Those who did so were suspected of an inclination towards novel and dangerous modes of thinking, then rife on the Continent and slowly finding their way to England. More s father, who intended his son to make a career in his own profession, took the alarm ; he removed him from the university without a degree, and entered him at New Inn to commence at once the study of the law. The young man had been kept in a state of humiliating dependence in money matters, having had no allowance made him, and having had to apply to his father even for a pair of new shoes when the old were worn out. This system was pursued by his parents not from niggardliness but on principle ; and Thomas More in later years often spoke with appro bation of this severe discipline, as having been a means of keeping him from the vulgar dissipations in which his fellow-students indulged. After completing a two-years course in New Inn, an Inn of Chancery, More Avas admitted in February 1496 at Lincoln s Inn, an Inn of Court. "At that time the Inns of Court and Chancery presented the discipline of a well -constituted university, and, through professors under the name of readers and exercises under the name of meetings, law was systematically taught" (Campbell). In his professional studies More early dis tinguished himself, so that he was appointed reacler-in-law in FurnivaPs Inn ; but he would not relinquish the studies which had attracted him in Oxford. We find him deli vering a lecture to audiences of "all the chief learned of the city of London." 3 The subject he chose was a com promise between theology and the humanities, being St Augustine s De Civitate. In this lecture More sought less to expound the theology of his author than to set forth the philosophical and historical contents of the treatise. The lecture-room was a church, St Lawrence Jewry, placed at his disposal by Grocyn, the rector. Somewhere about this period of More s life two things happened which gave in opposite directions the determin ing impulse to his future career. More s was one of those highly susceptible natures which take more readily and more eagerly than common minds the impress of that which they encounter on their first contact with men. Two principal forms of thought and feeling were at this date in conflict, rather unconscious than declared, on Eng lish soil. Under the denomination of the " old learning," the sentiment of the Middle Ages and the idea of church authority was established and in full possession of the religious houses, the universities, and the learned profes sions. The foe that was advancing in the opposite direc tion, though without the conscience of a hostile purpose, was the new power of human reason animated with the revived sentiment of classicism. In More s mind both these hostile influences found a congenial home. Each had its turn of supremacy, and in his early years it seemed as if the humanistic influence would gain the final victory. About the age of twenty he was seized with a violent access of devotional rapture. He took a disgust to the world and its occupations, and experienced a longing to give himself over to an ascetic life. He took a lodging near the Charterhouse, and subjected himself to the disci pline of a Carthusian monk. He wore a sharp shirt of hair next his skin, scourged himself every Friday and Life by B. R. Life by B. R. 3 Roper, Life,. other fasting days, lay upon the bare ground with a log under his head, and allowed himself but four or five hours sleep. This access of the ascetic malady lasted but a short time, and More recovered to all outward appearance his balance of mind. But he never entirely emancipated himself from the sentiment of devotion, though in later life it exhibited itself in a more rational form. Even when he was chancellor he would take part in church services, walking in their processions with a surplice. This, however, was at a later time. For the moment the balance of his faculties seemed to be restored by a revival of the antagonistic sentiment of humanism which he had imbibed from the Oxford circle of friends, and specially from Erasmus. The dates as regards More s early life are uncertain, and we can only say that it is possible that the acquaintance with Erasmus might have begun during Erasmus s first visit to England in 1499. Tradition has dramatized their first meeting into the story given by Cresacre More, 4 that the two happened to sit opposite each other at the lord mayor s table, that they got into an argument during dinner, and that, in mutual astonish ment at each other s wit and readiness, Erasmus ex claimed, "Aut tu es Mortis, aut nullus," and the other replied, "Aut tu es Erasmus, aut diabolus ! " Reject ing this legend, which bears the stamp of fiction upon its face, we have certain evidence of acquaintance between the two men in a letter of Erasmus with the date "Oxford, 29th October 1499." If we must admit the correctness of the date of Ep. 14 in the collection of Erasmus s Epistolx, we should have to assume that their acquaintance had begun as early as 1497. Ten years More s senior, and master of the accomplishments which More was ambitious to acquire, Erasmus could not fail to exercise a powerful influence over the brilliant young Englishman. More s ingenuous demeanour, quick intelligence, and winning manners fascinated Erasmus from the first, and acquaint ance rapidly ripened into warm attachment. This contact with the prince of letters revived in More the spirit of the "new learning," and he returned with ardour to the study of Greek, which had been begun at Oxford. The humanistic influence was sufficiently strong to save him from wrecking his life in monkish mortification, and even to keep him for a time on the side of the party of progress. He ac quired no inconsiderable facility in the Greek language, from which he made and published some translations. His Latin style, though wanting the inimitable ease of Erasmus and often offending against idiom, is yet in copiousness and propriety much above the ordinary Latin of the English scholars of his time. More s attention to the new studies was always subor dinate to his resolution to rise in his profession, in which he was stimulated by his father s example. As early as 1502 he was appointed under-sheriff of the city of London, an office then judicial, and of considerable dignity. He first attracted public attention by his conduct in the parliament of 1504, by his daring opposition to the king s demand for money. Henry VII. was entitled, according to feudal laws, to a grant on occasion of his daughter s marriage. But he came to the House of Commons for a much larger sum than he intended to give with his daughter. The members, unwilling as they were to vote the money, were afraid to offend the king, till the silence was broken by More, whose speech is said to have moved the House to reduce the subsidy of three-fifteenths which the Govern ment had demanded to 30,000. One of the chamberlains went and told his master that he had been thwarted by a beardless boy. Henry never forgave the audacity ; but, for the moment, the only revenge he could take was upon
4 Life, p. 93.
